The benefits of long-term garden design

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How many of us garden for future generations? In the past, large estates were planned for future heirs, even if the fantastic budgets allowed scope for a certain amount of instant gratification, such as the moving of villages, digging out of lakes and recontouring of hills and vales.

Today, domestic gardens are usually designed for the short term – probably for no longer than the owners expect to live there. However, I have noticed that more and more of my clients are tending to settle down. They tell me they won’t be leaving their home until they’re carried out in a box, so “don’t move, improve” is the order of the day. In such cases, garden horizons are becoming more long-term – and I have no doubt that the longer you have to develop your garden the more you can improve the property. A well thought-out garden gives the house a grounded and well established atmosphere.

Bunny's gardenCredit:
Sabrina Rothe

So, what aspects of garden design benefit most from taking a long-term view? The overall plan is key. This should solve basic problems (such as screen eyesores, highlight views, filter winds, resolve access from house to garden, etc). You might not complete the scheme for years, even decades, and phasing may well be inevitable, but far better this way than scrimping on the spaces and specifications. For example, large paved areas are heavily used and can look stunning, but they eat up budgets. At the outset, use gravel to keep it bold until you can afford the paving – don’t be tempted to shrink the space or use an inferior long-term material.

Flexibility should also be built into the plan to accommodate changing circumstances – perhaps an extension for a home office or to incorporate some extra land. For example, several schemes I’ve worked on already have planting in place to screen a parcel of land that is earmarked for development when coffers need filling.

Planting for the long-term

Microclimate is worth addressing early on. Every time I go out in my garden and hear the wind in the trees, but don’t feel it in my face, I feel smug about the windbreak I planted before unpacking when we moved in 30 years ago on April 1. It nearly led to a divorce as my husband had hoped I would be “playing house” but those tiny twigs, under 2ft high and 20 pence each, are now towering giants and have made life much more comfortable for the rooted and booted.

Trees, we always hope, are for posterity. Planting small bare root specimens (just whips or small feathers), almost inevitably gives you a more naturally shaped tree in the long term. They also won’t need staking and cost far less. Granted, for some schemes instant trees can be brought in almost like sculptures and make a massive impact. On one project we planted huge 20ft multi-stem cork oaks in an Iranian-style courtyard; they look stupendous and have survived and even grown on.

Avenues of trees can work wellCredit:
Marianne Majerus

With the increasing use of air pots (air-pot.com) for growing specimen trees, transplanting has become far more successful at larger sizes, but for most everyday gardens planting small is still best. Whips settle in quickly and in three years or so will often overtake a larger tree planted at the same time. A screen of whips planted at 6-10ft centres quickly knits together. Thinning at a later date allows you to manipulate your design – you can thin for character trees, specimens or maybe to create space for play equipment.

Planting specimen trees and avenues is for posterity, and getting the spacing right is not always straightforward. For avenues it is useful to sketch out the anticipated look at 10, 20, 30 and maybe 100-year intervals to see how the trees will knit up and to make sure you don’t obliterate a focal point.

Inevitably you will need to raise the canopies at regular intervals to prevent this. A 32-50ft spacing along the line used to be fairly common for many avenue trees but now a spacing of 16ft is increasingly common with a view to thinning out every other one later.

The neat designs of Bunny's gardenCredit:
Sabrina Rothe

For avenues, planting the two lines of trees in a staggered formation is usual, to give individual specimens more light and root room. Many people don’t notice this lack of pairing, your brain assumes they are. Choosing your species of trees for the long-term is less straightforward than it used to be. With global warming and new diseases rolling in from around the world, it makes sense to broaden the range of trees we plant.

Monocultures are more vulnerable. It is also more common nowadays to plant trees that were previously dismissed as too tender, such as the evergreen oak, Quercus ilex and the cork oak, Quercus suber.

Short-term fixes

Temporary short-term fixes are useful for delineating longer term intentions. The late designer David Hicks used clever tricks in his garden. His finials on large brick piers, silhouettes of acorns, urns or whatever, were cut from plywood (using a jigsaw) and painted in a stone colour. If viewed from two axes there would be two silhouettes at right angles to each other. Clever, and when the plywood gave up, maybe the funds would be there for a stone edifice instead.

Inexpensive terracotta or plastic “terracotta” is often bright orange but can be transformed by way of a light lime wash (an old trick of Humphrey Repton’s) so that it looks softer. Black plastic pots wrapped with hessian until more coveted long-term substitutes are acquired works well, too.

Your terracotta doesn't have to be garishCredit:
Alamy

When building structures in the garden, the choice of material affects the lifespan. Pressure-treated softwood will not last like Accoya, the brand name of a treated wood (accoya.com), which has a 70-year service life, according to The Timber Research and Development Association (TRADA). Oak, cedar and sweet chestnut are also all highly durable.

Some materials last longer than you might think – in the garden here we made a cob hut (using mud from the field), with a thatched roof. It soon looked as though it had been standing for 100 years. Hopefully it will still be here in 100 years’ time.

It is satisfying to add assets to your garden slowly, whether they are stone piers, a summerhouse or a beautiful bridge that will be appreciated by the next generation. It is also very rewarding to watch the planting take shape and come of age. Long after you’ve left the property, the grass and herbaceous borders may be lost, replaced or retired, but the structure and key players will do you proud.